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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Western recognition won’t change the reality on the ground: A
Palestinian state has never seemed further away
By Ivana Kottasová, CNN
Updated:
9:55 AM EDT, Sun September 21, 2025
Source: CNN
The quest for Palestinian independence gained a major boost on Sunday
as diplomatic heavyweights, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia,
formally recognized a State of Palestine ahead of the United Nations
General Assembly.
France is expected to follow suit at the UN General Assembly this week,
with President Emmanuel Macron stating in July that the country would
recognize a Palestinian state, leading the way for other key
international powers to join them.
Formal recognition by three G7 countries – two of which are also
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – along with
Portugal, Belgium and others – will mark a symbolic milestone for the
Palestinian cause. But the current situation on the ground makes it
almost impossible to imagine that a two-state solution, through which a
sovereign Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel, could become
a reality.
Many analysts and activists say this is the result of decades of
Israeli policy aimed at sabotaging the two-state solution by building
Jewish settlements on Palestinian land and undermining the Palestinian
Authority (PA), which governs parts of the territory.
Others point a finger at the PA, which remains among Palestinians and
is seen by many as weak, corrupt and lacking legitimacy.
Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at the London-based think
tank Chatham House and a professor of international relations, said
that a Palestinian state is the furthest it has been from becoming
reality since the Oslo Accords established a peace process more than
three decades ago.
“And in the sense of the relations between Israel and Palestinians,
it’s the worst situation, probably, since 1948 (when Israel declared
independence),” he told CNN.
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most far-right
in Israel’s history, has become very vocal and steadfast in its
rejection of a Palestinian state. Ideas previously pushed by fringe,
far-right segments of Israeli society have become mainstream, with
ministers openly calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank
and for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich left no room for
doubt earlier this year, when he said that the approval of thousands of
new Jewish housing units in the West Bank will “permanently bury the
idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and
no one to recognize.”
This shift has caused alarm among proponents of a two-state solution.
“They are very loud and clear about not ever wanting to see a
Palestinian state and doing whatever they need to do to obstruct it and
I think that this is what largely spurred the UK, Australia, France…
to take the step now,” said Julie Norman, an associate professor at
University College London and a senior associate fellow at the Royal
United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense and security think
tank.
This reasoning is clear in the case of the UK, where an influential
demanded the government recognize the State of Palestine now “while
there is still a state to recognize.”
Ever-expanding settlements
The UN considers East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza to be
Palestinian territories, and the land that would make up the future
Palestinian state.
But East Jerusalem has long been annexed by Israel and decades of
expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank have turned the
would-be-state into a collection of disjointed Palestinian pockets cut
off from each other by checkpoints, roads and swathes of land
controlled by the Israeli military.
Some 700,000 Israeli settlers, most of whom are Jewish, now live in the
occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in settlements considered
illegal under international law.
That number is likely to rise. In recent months, the Netanyahu
government has approved a massive expansion of settlements, including
E1, a controversial project to build thousands of new homes that would
effectively cut the West Bank in two. Announcing the revival of the
long-stalled E1 scheme in August, Smotrich .“The Palestinian state is
being erased from the table not with slogans, but with actions,” he
said.
Lior Amihai, executive director of Peace Now, an Israeli
non-governmental organization that advocates for a two-state solution
and monitors the expansion of settlements and violence in the West
Bank, told CNN the situation there has never been so dire.
“Our researchers on the ground are finding new outposts on a weekly
basis, roads are being erected and created illegally on a regular
basis. The annexation is already happening,” he said.
“Settler violence that leads to the expulsion of Palestinian
communities, violence against women, children, elderly men, is
happening on a record scale, on a regular basis, and without any
accountability, if not with the support of Israeli law enforcement
authorities like the military and the police.”
According to the UN, some 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the
occupied West Bank since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7,
2023.
Gaza, meanwhile, has been reduced largely to rubble by nearly two years
of relentless bombardment and ground operations launched by Israel
following the attacks.
One in 10 people living in Gaza has been killed or injured in the war,
according to a former chief of the Israeli military, . Many
international experts, including the International Association of
Genocide Scholars, two leading and an have concluded that Israel has
committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Security question
Both Israel and its closest and most powerful ally, the United States,
have criticized the moves by the UK, Canada, Australia and others to
recognize a Palestinian state.
But the US and Israel are becoming increasingly isolated. The countries
set to recognize Palestinian statehood will be joining more than 140
nations that already do so. And while the recognition was previously
limited to mostly non-Western countries, this has changed in the past
few years, with more European and Caribbean nations taking the step.
Several Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, have accused them of
“rewarding terrorism,” an accusation by the US State Department.
Elliott Abrams, who has served in three Republican administrations,
including during Trump’s first term, said that he believed the
countries’ decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood were
motivated by domestic political pressures.
“This does absolutely nothing to benefit one single Palestinian. It
is a result of domestic political pressure from the left and from
Muslim groups… these are democracies, and they are reacting to the
desires of voters. But it’s not going to help Palestinians at all,”
he told CNN. Abrams, currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern
Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is among those who argue
that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no
longer viable – partly because, he said, Israel cannot allow it.
“The critical question for Israel is, especially after October 7,
security. Israel now has the ability to go in and out of the West Bank
at will, against Hamas and other terrorist groups. If Palestine were a
sovereign state, (Israel) would lose that ability, so I don’t think
there’s a real possibility any longer for a Palestinian state,” he
said.
But according to both RUSI’s Norman and Amihai of Peace Now,
Israel’s security is precisely the reason why an independent
Palestinian state is necessary.
“As long as there is occupation, as long as there is Israeli control
over the territories, there’s always going to be some kind of
resistance to that, whether it’s Hamas or another body,” Norman
said.
“This is going to be necessary for Israel’s security. It is not
rewarding Hamas, if the way that this is being framed is that Hamas has
to disarm to allow this to go forward,” she said, pointing to the New
York Declaration approved by the UN General Assembly in recent days.
The resolution, which outlines steps towards a two-state solution and
backs a Hamas-free government for Palestine, says that governance, law
enforcement and security must lie solely with the PA, with appropriate
international support.
Hamas has ruled in Gaza since taking over following a brief civil war
with rival faction Fatah, which dominates the PA, in 2007. It has not
held an election since then.
As for whether the plan is workable, Amihai has a simple answer.
“It’s always a question of price and the alternatives. If the
alternative is to have an apartheid state without security, without
democracy, then it’s not an alternative,” he said.
“And of course, even evacuating half a million settlers (from the
occupied West Bank) is a price worth paying in order to have democracy
for all people, freedom for all people and security for all people,”
he said.
“The Israeli government are now taking an enterprise of destruction
of the livelihood of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and are
fantasizing about transferring them elsewhere. That is a much bigger
project than establishing or providing the possibility to establish
Palestinian statehood.”
Symbols matter
Analysts across the board recognize that at present, the reality on the
ground makes a functioning Palestinian state impossible – even if
they disagree on whether that’s because Israel has spent decades
torpedoing the two-state solution, or because the PA is considered
dysfunctional and corrupt.
But many say that even though the recognition by the UK, France and
others won’t change that reality in the short term, it could start
moving the needle.
Ardi Imseis, an associate professor of international law at Queen’s
University in Canada, former UN official in the Middle East and author
of the 2023 book “The United Nations and the Question of
Palestine,” said the step is not just symbolic.
“Although the act of recognition is a political one, once it is
given, very clear legal consequences flow that impact the recognizing
state’s obligations under international law,” he told CNN.
Among these, he said, are the obligations to respect the territorial
integrity and political independence of the recognized state and to
accept the inherent right of self-defense by the recognized state if it
is subject to an unlawful use of force.
“These three norms are fundamental to the maintenance of
international peace and security. And in Palestine, each of them is
being violated by Israel,” he said, pointing to the 2024 advisory
opinion by the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top court,
that Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal.
Whether these latest countries’ recognition of Palestinian statehood
will be followed by any meaningful action is unclear, given the many
decades of failures by the international community to back up peace
plans with concrete measures.
The New York Declaration outlines steps for Israel, the PA and the
international community to take, including the possibility of imposing
restrictions on those who try to undermine them. Mekelberg of Chatham
House said that if these materialize, it could make a real difference.
European states in particular could put much more pressure on Israel
through trade restrictions, as the European Union is by far Israel’s
largest trading partner. “They could cause a lot of economic misery.
For example, every time there is an announcement of new settlements,
there should come some reaction that has economic and diplomatic
impact,” he explained.
The EU has sanctioned some violent settlers and said it would review
its association agreement with Israel. Earlier this week, the EU
Commission proposed against “extremist ministers and violent
settlers” and removing some of the country’s trade concessions,
which would effectively mean putting new tariffs on Israel.
The recognition, Mekelberg said, also goes both ways, placing greater
obligations on the Palestinian Authority. “From the Palestinian point
of view, it’s a responsibility. If you are a state, you behave
differently, or you should behave differently, and this has to be
tested, because at the end of the day, both sides have to make
concessions.”
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